FILM REVIEW: TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE

Hoyts Distribution
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“If you like this kind of thing, it’s the kind of thing you’ll like”. That’s perhaps a lazy way of responding to someone’s question about a film (or anything, really) that you don’t have a particularly strong feeling for one way or the other. And so at the risk of being lazy, and incurring the wrath of Twi-hards everywhere, if Twilight is the kind of film you’ll like, then you’ll like Eclipse.

Ney, love. For people who devour the Stephenie Myer books, and the films on which they are based, don’t just like Twilgiht, they love it. LOVE IT! I haven’t read the books which may explain some of my detachment (apathy?) towards this vampire teen romance “saga”, but then I shouldn’t have to have read the source material to like the film: Eclipse, and indeed any book-to-film adaptation, should succeed on its own terms as a film. And for me, the Twilight films do not.

Admittedly, I found Eclipse to be slightly more involving than its predecessors, Twilight and New Moon, perhaps because it is not so bogged down in the teen love triangle – between vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), werewolf Jacob (Taylor ‘ab-master’ Lautner), and mortal Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) – which fuels the storyline, and the hearts of adolescent girls (of all ages) who have made the books and films such a worldwide phenomenon.

I’m not sure how much of this new focus has to do with director David Slade (the third director in as many films; Bill ‘Dreamgirls’ Condon will direct the final instalment, Breaking Dawn), who’s no stranger to vampire films having directed 30 Days of Night. There’s certainly more action in Eclipse, although you have to wait until the third act for the climactic battle, where the good vampires and the werewolves, forming an uneasy alliance, take on an army (which consists of no more than 20!) of newborn vampires.

These newbies are in the service of Victoria (played here by Bryce Dallas Howard, herself a Twilight newbie), a vamp who has sworn to exact revenge on Bella since film one, something to do with the death of her beloved. None of that much matters for you’ll either know what the hell is going on or you won’t be in the theatre.